Taking Aids fight to vulnerable

Once again the international community has been brought face to face with the most deadly disease of our time—the HIV/Aids pandemic that has been sweeping the world for the last 25 years. The exposure came this week at the United Nations General Assembly, the second in five years to commit governments and civil society to action.

If any reminder is necessary, 65 million people worldwide have contracted the virus which causes Aids; 25 million of those have died; 15 million children have been orphaned because their parents died from the disease.

UN Secretary General Kofi Annan complimented nation states which committed in 2001 to, among other actions, make anti-retroviral treatment available to large numbers of their populations in need of the treatment and care to live long and quality lives.

However, the secretary general said all states have failed the groups of people most vulnerable to contracting the virus, ie, females between the ages 15 and 24 years, men who have sex with men, prisoners and minority ethnic and political groups which live on the margins of societies.

In this regard, Caribbean societies, in which the above marginal groups have long been abandoned to the fringes to lead a kind of half existence, are way behind the requirement.

Therefore there are some real challenges up ahead for our societies over the next five years of the second declaration.

Let’s start with this one: developing a programme of sex education for young people, especially young females who are far more vulnerable than young men. The reason here is very simple: gender relations in our societies allow men, especially older men, to dominate the sexuality of our women.

The Caricom prime minister with responsibility for health issues, Denzil Douglas, speaking at the UN forum, said our state systems, through passive acceptance of such exploitation, have all but sanctioned such behaviours.

Of course the question that has to be faced here has to do with whether there can be a consensus in our societies to decide if the opportunity of giving young people, in a captive situation in schools, information that could change behaviours and save lives will be utilised. Sensibilities on all sides need to be considered and formulas worked out.

Reaching agreement on how to treat with the other most vulnerable groups, traditional pariahs, such as men who have sex with men, prisoners, women who exchange sex for money, will perhaps be even more difficult to conceive of. But there will be no easy options in dealing with these obstacles.

Nevertheless, Prime Minister Douglas of St Kitts, speaking on behalf the region, committed the Caribbean to reaching the target of achieving universal access by the time frame set out—2010.

Universal access means, as Prime Minister Douglas noted, passing legislation to counter the criminalisation of homosexual behaviour and finding ways to protect against the spread of the virus in prisoners.

Achieving these goals will result in severe transformational challenges to the way we have lived and what we have believed in the Caribbean for 500 years.

Externally, the majority of Caribbean countries will have to fight the battle of being designated as middle-income countries which are not able to access grants from The Global Fund, those funds being reserved for the poorest nations.

Getting concessions on the eligibility criteria will prove even more difficult as there is now an estimated US$900 million shortfall projected.